Chapter Ten
"It was well done, Robinson. I'm receiving enquiries from the Lodge as to why you have yet to join the Brethren." Cooper hesitated for a second, then said meaningfully, "Of course, I'm also looking at recommending you for promotion."
The implication was clear: if you want to be a DCI, become a Freemason.
Jack swallowed hard, and his answer took a matter of seconds to consider and some tortured sentences to deliver.
"Sir … the difficulty I face in replying to you is one which I think you will understand easily, but many of your fellow masons would not. I see Freemasonry as a great means to engineer change for the better in our city; and for a lot of men, it will also be a step up in terms of career advancement."
Jack paused, conscious that he was picking his way through a political minefield.
"The thing is – I feel I am already doing everything I can to engineer change for the better in Melbourne. I'm not changing laws, but I change lives – daily, fundamentally and often irrevocably."
He looked Bill Cooper straight in the eye.
"I like my job as it is, Chief. I like to think I'm pretty good at it, and my statistics back me up. I don't want to advance to a career that stops it being my job to go to the crime scene, but instead to wait, pushing more paper around and talking politics, until someone reports back to me about what they've found."
He shrugged.
"So – I don't want a new means to make a difference, and I don't want career advancement. That means I think the masons would want to boot me out within the first week. If I'm wrong, I know you'll tell me."
Cooper raised an eyebrow and half of a smile.
"If I have a criticism of you, Jack, it's that you consistently underestimate your abilities. We wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in booting you out; but we're also not interested in forcing you to participate in something you can't believe in wholeheartedly."
He folded his napkin and got up; Jack rose to his feet as well, and they headed for the door.
Cooper stopped, looked at his hand on a chair back pensively for a moment, and glanced back over his shoulder.
"I'm still going to be recommending you for promotion to Detective Chief Inspector, though. And I'm not going to apologise – you can make a difference to more people and more effectively, the more senior you become. You're too valuable an asset to be kept at DI level, Jack. Coffee?"
The Senior Detective Inspector gratefully answered the only question for which he could formulate an answer, and the coffee was served black.
The clink of cup on saucer and teaspoon on cup as Jack tried to compute his options was thereafter marked mezzo piano in the score of the soundtrack to his life. The fortissimo earthquake provided by the snoring of the judge in the wing-back chair was mostly imaginary.